624- How to Manage Explosive Behavior in the Moment: An Action Plan for Parents

0:00This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

0:25Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: Welcome to the Attention Deficit Disorder Expert Podcast Series by Attitude Magazine.

0:36Hey everyone, I'm Carol Fleck and on behalf of the Attitude team, I'm delighted to welcome you to today's ADHD Experts presentation titled, How to Manage Explosive Behavior in the Moment, an action plan for parents. Leading today's presentation is Dr. Roseanne Kapanah-Hodge. She is a licensed therapist, a certified school psychologist with a doctorate in education, and a nationally recognized expert in children's mental health and emotional dysregulation. She helps families dealing with challenging behaviors through practical, science-backed strategies. She is the creator of Regulation First Parenting, host of the Dysregulated Kids podcast, and author of The Dysregulated Kid, the parenting playbook for helping your child find calm in a chaotic world.

1:32Today, Dr. Hodge will explain what's happening in your child's brain and nervous system during moments of dysregulation. You'll learn how to implement a clear action plan to respond with confidence, reduce escalation, and help your child build lasting emotional control. If you believe in the work we're doing here at Attitude to inform, empower, and support the ADHD community, please consider subscribing to Attitude magazine. With your support, we can continue to provide trusted resources and information to help you and your family. So without further ado, I'm delighted to introduce Dr. Roseanne Kapanah-Hodge.

2:12Thank you so much for joining us today. Well, I'm so grateful to be here and I'm so happy to share this information with parents, grandparents, caregivers, and professionals. And I want everybody to know before I jump in, this really is a webinar and a training, a mission that's for kids of all ages. So whether you have a young child or maybe you're pregnant with a child, or you have a failure to launch, young adult at home, and this is also for yourself, these tools have worked with thousands of the most dysregulated kids and adults, and they'll work for you too. So I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump in.

2:58Let's get started. So as we talk about the things that I do, I just want to say that I have worked really hard. You can jump in and find out more about it. We're going to talk about it. So let's talk about what happens. And I know you are trying a lot of things and these are things that are really amazing, but they're not working for you. And maybe they're working for your next door neighbor. Maybe they're working for a student in your classroom, but not for Amy or Joey. We're going to talk about the science and how to work with the nervous system, not against it. And I promise you, it's not going to be that hard, which is really exciting.

3:47So let's jump in. Let's start our first poll. And which of these do you experience the most with your child of any age? Is it A, explosive meltdowns? Is it B, shutdown withdrawal? C, equally? Or D, it depends on the day, which some of my parents say, you know, the wind blowing. So we'd love to get your answer. We're going to talk about these after. So please participate. Let's find out where you are. So we're going to talk about the science of a meltdown. We're going to talk about my stress cup so you can better understand what actually causes the nervous system to become understimulated and overstimulated.

4:31It's going to be surprising for you, but also help you to understand you have more power than you do. And maybe you're just directing the efforts in the wrong way. We're going to talk about what to do in that first 30 seconds of a meltdown, a freak out, an argument, because that's what you want to know. And guess what? I know how to do that and you can too, right? We're going to talk about comms protocol, which is just a simple five-step part. And then, you know, just remember we're going to, this is about simplicity. I want you to understand that we actually can do less and have a more regulated kid, a more peaceful home.

5:12And again, I'm so glad you're here. So we over-focus on behavior. And behavior is important. But I want you to reframe behavior because it's really cues. It's really little clues about what the nervous system is doing. And when we start looking at behavior as a clue, we actually start supporting ourselves and the kids that we care for or are teaching. And we have to rely less on compliance and control because your kid's too dysregulated for that to work, right? So behavior is just what we see. We see anger. We see irritation. We see stimming. But what's really driving that, right? Here's just some of the things that are driving some of these behaviors, right?

6:12Executive dysfunction, sensory overload, your exhaustion, their exhaustion, worry, fear. All of these things are all parts of it. And I absolutely have not covered everything. So just to understand the nervous system, very basic. I would love to spend an entire webinar doing the nervous system, but we all have nervous systems. And the nervous system is in charge, your autonomic nervous system is in charge of your stress response. So when you feel a stressor, real or imagined, that's very important because your nervous system is agnostic of stress. It doesn't know if it's a big stressor, a little stressor, if it's something you're just worried about, or there really is a tiger or a bear in your yard.

7:05So it has two gears. It has a relaxed gear, parasympathetic. That's when you're calm. That's when you're ready for learning. That's when you're ready for discipline and correction. It's actually when you're ready for your body's ready for healing if it's dealing with a cold or an autoimmune issue. And then we have our sympathetic dominant state. That's fight, flight, or freeze, even fawn. And when this happens, this is so important. When we go into sympathetic dominance, our frontal lobes go offline and we lose access to good decision-making, logic, or not hearing you. And this is important because you're wondering why your kid's not learning.

7:48it's because of that. So we'll dive into that. So I want to talk about neurodivergent brains. So I'm a mom of two neurodivergent kids. I've had the privilege for three decades of supporting kids with neurodivergence, all kinds, right? We come in all shapes and sizes. They process differently. And the way we have an executive functioning lag, we have some dopamine deficits, and we have the additional strain of sensory processing issues. And neurodivergent kids are almost exclusively kinesthetic learners, meaning they learn by touch. So their brain is set up to process differently. We all know there's some real gifts in that, but we also know that it doesn't always fit in the world.

8:35So they're at a more of a disadvantage and they're more likely, their nervous systems are much more likely to experience stress, and a neurodivergent individual is 10x likely to have a mental health diagnosis. So what's happening, right? And this is where I talk about the stress cup, just to make sense out of the nervous system and make it so ridiculously easy that this is what I tell kids, this is what I tell people with PhDs, this is what I tell everybody. So our nervous system actually doesn't have unlimited capacity. We keep adding things in our stress cup, bad night of sleep, poor food, medication wearing off, wrong medication, annoying kid on the bus, whatever is going on.

9:23And it keeps adding into our stress cup. And this is what I want you to understand when you're saying, well, nothing really bad just happened. why is my kid so quick to ignite, overly emotional, resistant, shut down, whatever you're seeing in that spectrum of under and overstimulated behaviors, what's driving it is daily stressors compounding in the nervous system and the nervous system biologically saying, hey, I don't got any more room for this. So think about one thing in your own stress cup that doesn't have to be a big thing, can be a little thing, right? For me, I know that when I don't sleep properly, I just don't have as much capacity for anything, right?

10:10That's pretty common. And common triggers, what are little things that fill our kids' stress cup? Homework. Homework is really hard. Why? They're sort of done at the end of the day. They also may have had, exhausted all their cognitive demands. They may have executive functioning issues. It seems to be one of the biggest things for our neurodivergent kids. Transitions. So we're moving, especially from high dopamine tasks like gaming, typically for boys, girls being on social media, and then going to a low dopamine task, right? And there's lots to say about devices. We're living with devices. We have to learn how to manage it.

10:57That deserves its own conversation. Sensory loads. So once you are a neurodivergent individual, your nervous system is more sensitive to things. We can harness that for amazing, for good, right? Think about how hypervigilant an individual can be and so amazing at certain tasks, right? Especially when it's tasks that they can lead to careers and just are wonderful things that actually really help an individual. But our sensory sensitivity constantly adds stress in our stress cup and makes us less available, which is part of why your child very commonly just falls apart after school. Or you come home as a neurodivergent and you're done after work, right?

11:42And then masking. So this is very much what happens to the majority of neurodivergent individuals, kids with ADHD.

11:50Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: they hold it together at school, not because they're being manipulative, but because the way that things are set up in schools, teachers have a lot of structure. They also are subconsciously motivated to really achieve, do well, all these things. And then they get home, their stress cup is over. It's overflowing. There's literally physiologically no room left. We're going to talk about it. So which trigger fills your kid of any age the most? A, transitions, B, homework or just demands in general, right? Could be emptying the dishwasher or whatever. C, sensory overload, and D, social situations, which socialization in 2026 isn't easy.

12:40Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: I don't think it ever was easy, but now that it's so reliant on digital. So please answer these. We'll talk about these at the end. This episode is sponsored by NoCD. October is ADHD Awareness Month, and this year's theme is ADHD at the center, a nod to the fact that ADHD rarely exists in isolation, and it touches all aspects of life. In a recent Attitude survey, more than two-thirds of adults with ADHD said they have anxiety or depression. They talked about symptoms of perseveration, intrusive thoughts, and avoidance. For millions of people, that's not just anxiety. That's OCD. And most of them have no idea.

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14:30Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: So let's talk about the moments before a meltdown. Everybody wants, I always have, just so everybody knows, I always have a magic wand. Boy, I wish I had a magic wand that got our kids to be regulated and responsive and feel good about themselves and parents to be connected. But really, honestly, it's about regulation of the nervous system. So we all face crises, but it's those daily moments before you get there that aren't that hard, honestly, but we're just not talking about it. So I'm so glad you're here, where change becomes possible, right? You are caught in a reactivity cycle with your teenager, your young adult, your kid.

15:17Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: It's because we're not practicing how to regulate outside the moment. So before the meltdown, we have to have predictability, safety, connection, practice, right? We could talk about that. During the meltdown, we have to lower the threat. We actually don't make demands when somebody, as I call, is in the red. Once that frontal lobes are offline, I think you all know you're wasting your time, which is why you're here, right? And it doesn't mean we accept behavior. It doesn't mean we don't discipline. It's about the order. Then after regulation returns, we can connect. We can repair. We can teach.

15:57Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: We can course correct. We also can practice what you should be doing like the Navy SEALs. Whether the mission went well or it went poorly, they dissect after every one. And our neurodivergent kids can be brilliant with IQ or have splinter skills. They might not actually know what to do. And I saw that over and over. So really important here. It's the moments before a meltdown. All the things we're doing to regulate that actually make it where your child of any age can hear you, more likely to hear you, but all kids dysregulate. It's perfectly normal. It's not normal when it's happening a lot. So let's get into that.

16:46Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: So dysregulation is contagious. So is calm. So the nervous system is actually broadcasting its state to everybody. So if you think of anybody, right? Like I always like to think of, you know, imagine somebody, you know, who's just like the wall of calm, who's just so regulated and you know it. And then imagine somebody in your life or in your history who's very dysregulated. And I mean adults, right? And that when you are around those people, they're not necessarily saying anything, but you maybe are picking up on that they move a certain way or they have a beautiful smile on their face and you know what state they are in.

17:36Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: A dysregulated kid is actually sinking to the loudest nervous system in the room. And I know this is the hardest part of this. this means that our nervous system actually makes a big difference. So if you are constantly in an escalation cycle, right? So there's two situations here. There's the repetitive, constant escalation cycle that many of you face. I am not naive, okay? My book, The Disregulated Kid, my kid is that dysregulated kid in the first chapter. And I learned that as great as a practitioner as I was, my nervous system was actually the problem setting him off. So I always talk about things that I do myself.

18:23And so when we get stuck in this intervention cycle, right, we can't always

18:30Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: be 100 % regulated. I would never say that to anybody. But what we need to do is before that escalation starts. We have to start practicing in little ways. We'll talk about it. It's going to be easy, I swear. But the child stress cup goes over and then you're starting to see dysregulation. You're seeing understimulation, overstimulation, right? Under, can't pay attention, calling their name five times. You get a lot of huss and was, a lot of lagging, maybe even just straight shutdown. I see shutdown happening more in the last 10 years than I have before that. And then maybe you have obsessive compulsive on the other side, right?

19:12Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: So we're seeing all these. Then we all of a sudden have a worried parent. Maybe we have an outwardly angry parent. And then that threat response, because it's the nervous system, is perceiving a threat. The nervous system can't tell if it's a bear in your yard. true story, bear likes to hang out in my hot tub, or you missed the bus, or you forgot your homework. It literally can't tell the difference. You're thinking cognitively they understand, but once you're activated, frontal lobes go offline. Logic is gone. So what happens is we have to pause. Whoever that adult is, we have to react with calm.

19:56Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: We come at it with anger and control. Now, again, you're not going to be perfect. So I'm asking you to do 80 % awesome, right? And I think that really helps you to understand that because perfection is not possible. And I really don't know anybody, including myself who is. But once the nervous system is either going to pick up that the threat is increased by the adult's reactivity, or it's going to pick up that, oh, that adult is decreasing their stress levels. I really have misperceived it. And again, this is all very subconscious. So when we talk about how we do things, my regulation first framework is incredibly simple.

20:38Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: It's really saying, again, we are connecting, we are correcting, we are teaching, but you're really kind of wasting your time if you're not regulating first at some level. It's a biological principle that guides how we interact with others, right? And this has to happen before you can have repair. You cannot demand compliance in a dysregulated person. It's literally like asking somebody who's drowning, hey, let's practice swimming. You wouldn't do it. But yet we see a dysregulated child or teenager or young adult, and we expect that. That is not what biology, right? So we regulate first. It sends a signal.

21:23Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: And when I mean regulate, you're showing cum. You don't even have to say anything. Now, sometimes depending on your relationship with your child or your grandchild or somebody you're caring for in some way, shape, or form, you can actually say a word or two. We'll talk about that. Then we connect. And your child's going to allow you to connect in whatever way that you have a history with. then we correct, then we teach. And this really breaks the frustration cycle that you are all experiencing. And kids today are more dysregulated than ever. That's a big part of my mission. So you can't correct what you can't regulate first.

22:07Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: It's just biology. And I say this over and over because I know how frustrated you are and how hopeless. I was that mother too. And I've walked so many people through it. So let's talk about the first 30 seconds of the freak out, the meltdown, the argument, the big, ridiculous emotional reactivity that you're like, what just happened? I don't know. You don't have to know. Okay. Because the nervous system, again, it doesn't know if it's a bear in your backyard or you asked your kid to put their socks son. It's going to treat it exactly the same, which is shocking to people, but that's what happens and don't worry about it.

22:50Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: We can unwind that. We're going to calm that nervous system. We're going to actually teach it how to regulate in all the moments before so your child can hear you and you can change things. So less words, stop talking. One of the worst things parents do, and this is coming from an Italian mother, is talk too much. As soon as you start layering in a lot of words when somebody's in the red and their behavior is showing you they're dysregulated, it's actually going to increase the threat, right? And this is why you're like, wait, I don't know why sometimes they're hearing me and other times they're not.

23:28Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: As soon as they're in a dysregulated state, forget it, okay? You're going to lower your body, right? Is if you're standing over a child or you're in a threatening position, you have to create a safety space for them. And again, we're not saying we agree with your behavior. You got to let go of that. We're actually just taking the threat down so they can hear you. I need you to take a three-second pause. I need you, we're going to talk about my love pause, but the three seconds is actually a really long time and you can regulate yourself enough to not show you're irritated or frightened or done, whatever it is.

24:10And you can say something if you have that kind of relationship. If your child is really in the red, being aggressive, verbally, physically, punching holes, this is what happens, right? I would not say anything. But if you really can get in there and you have that kind of relation, you can say, I see you, I'm here, or let's take a breath or whatever it is. Don't say, calm down. It's the worst thing you can say to somebody who's dysregulated. And then wait, wait, is it 90 seconds? Is it two minutes? Is it 10 minutes? And allow them to regulate. You're not being permissive. You're going to have a wonderful, hard conversation after, But these kids feel so shameful and criticized by everybody around them.

24:55They are not going to hear you and only in a regulated state. So this is really, really critical. So we're talking about my comms protocol. It's five steps. And it's really how do we get out of this reactivity cycle that feels like Groundhog Day? And how do we deescalate? How do we rebuild in a way that's actually pretty easy? and really comforting for people. Always starts with co-regulation. You got to regulate yourself first. The other parts cannot work if you are not 80 % of the time regulated. So you just need to get a B minus everybody, okay? So number one, you're calm as their anchor. That's it.

25:39So if you can't take a moment and breathe, you can't say a prayer, you can't do some somatic exercises, is there's lots of things. It's not going to happen. Don't expect your child to regulate when you are not. That's just biology. Your nervous system is actually sending a signal. On the positive, your calm is contagious. And you can do it. I don't care what your, all the work I've done, your nervous system didn't know if you had a trauma background or you're living out generations or you are at max capacity. There are ways to build capacity in your nervous system in micro ways. And the love pause, all you're doing is pausing your breathing or some other form of regulation.

26:29And then you're going to respond from regulation, not reactivity. Everybody can do this. There isn't a person on the planet. And then we're training our kids to do the same, okay, without telling us. So all your responses has to come out of that because we're getting the prefrontal cortex in there. We're stopping the sympathetic arousal state that's happening. And we're creating micro moments of regulation that is actually training our own nervous system to chill out and training our kids' nervous system like, hey, I can be regulated. Regulation is safe because again, once your child is locked in a sympathetic dominant stress cup is full, it's gonna perceive every single thing you do as a threat.

27:20And that is what's happening to kids and stress is building in lots of ways. It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. It doesn't mean your kid's doing anything wrong. We are living in stress. So once we are regulated enough as parents, as caregivers, as professionals, we can start seeing that it's biology. It's not defiance. Kids are not being willfully disrespectful. And this is about not personalizing the behavior. And once we don't personalize the behavior, we can say, huh, I'm seeing a pattern here every day after school or when the dog comes into the room or any of those things. We can start asking, what is their nervous system reacting to?

28:03and we can be very scientific, okay? And again, I did this for three decades. This is just using the biology of the nervous system to make it where kids are more connected, more self-regulated and can actually handle discipline. So we then look for root causes. Once you lower the threshold and the child isn't reacting to everything, you start to see, oh, hmm, This happens on the days they don't sleep. This happens when they're eating chicken nuggets. I mean, there's just so many things that can trigger kids in their environment. And you start to be able to see it and you can start seeing it, but you also can start exploring it with your child as they move into regulation.

28:52Kids are so smart. I mean, geez, that's one of the best things I've seen in three decades. They're just almost increasingly intelligent. and they know themselves when we ask the right questions. So the M is about modeling what you want to see in your kid. And so when you're doing the love pause, when you're like, hey, mommy is so done. I didn't sleep last night. I'm going to put my legs up the wall, which is just a way to get your brain back online. And I'm going to get myself regulated. You want to join me? Great. And you start showing your kid you're not perfect. and you start showing them what you want to see from then, right?

29:32So you can say, I'm feeling really frustrated right now. I've got to step away. So let's talk about practical somatic tools. Everything I do is practical. What can you do for free? What can you do in micro moments of regulation? I'm talking anywhere from 10 seconds to five minutes. This is what I do all day, right? So when we are talking about what to do when somebody's dysregulated and they really are in the red, we say nothing, okay? Now, if you have that kind of relationship, you can say, MC, you're having a hard time. Let's figure this out together. On the breath work, somatic side, somatic just is a fancy word, therapist word that's like, how can we release this from the body?

30:17Who doesn't need that more in their lives? Is this a really long exhalation, right? So my favorite breath is a four, seven, eight. You're breathing in for four. You make sure you're filling your belly and then you're holding for seven seconds and then you're doing a long exhalation. You can modify this as long as your exhalation is longer. Do you do a heart hug, right? So you're taking your right hand, you're putting it over your heart and you're actually taking your left hand and you're pressing down. This is actually just an incredible signal to the nervous system that you're safe. It's really simple and easy.

30:56Humming.

30:57Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: We know a lot of our autistic kids hum. This is to regulate themselves. And then movement. Is it pushing against the wall? Is it gentle swaying back and forth? These are all somatic tools that actually create regulation where you don't have to say anything. Very easy to incorporate and you can do this for yourself. And then five is about supporting and reinforcement. This is the missing piece that we forget about. We think are really intelligent kids, maybe academically smart kids. We need a lot of reinforcement as a neurodivergent. It takes 34 times to do something at an autonomic, regular, innate level to not even have to think about it, but they believe that it takes three times that for a neurodivergent.

31:47Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: So when you say I'm saying it a hundred times, I'm saying yes. So regulation and calm is a long-term skill, right? So what are you broadcasting, right? Safety, lowering your voice, getting on their level, silence, proximity, validated feeling. Validation does not mean you agree, okay? And then are you the other side, the threat? Are you on top of them? Are you trying to explain in the middle of a crisis? Are you giving a lot of empty threats? So the nervous system is really actually processing before you actually say a word. It's scanning you, okay? And their nervous system, it will activate what's called mirror neurons, and they'll start mimicking what you're doing, okay?

32:36Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: So regulation does not remove the boundary. I really want to be clear about this because people think that when I say you have to regulate and you have to be calm, that you never actually discipline a child. I'm quite the opposite. It means you actually can go deeper and have logical conversations with kids and removing all of that shame and defensiveness. This doesn't happen overnight. But when we do that, right, we are teaching kids to really honor their nervous system, work with the brain, not against it. And we're teaching them to problem solve. And at the same time, we want to hold boundaries for our kids, being very clear before, not after, boundaries don't come after.

33:24Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: And certainly if safety is an issue in a really highly dysregulated kid, we want to make sure we're creating space for somebody who's struggling with safety. We want to remove animals and other kids. And we don't want to say too much, right? You can actually say, stop. You can put your hand up. We'll talk a little bit about that. I know that this is really what's happening. So what are we doing today? What are we going to actually do today? Because what happens is information overload. And I'm about doing. I don't want you actually saying, let me go and Google this. No, that's not the way it works.

34:05Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: We have to actually start doing things. And that's why I broke things down, right? So today you can just notice one pattern, right? So you can start what's happening in that pattern. Keep it small. Observe what happens maybe right before the exhalation or the hour before or even the day before. Start pulling out and looking big. This is what I used to do for three decades is I was like the detective, like let's put all the pieces together, right? And then choose one micro step. Don't say I'm doing everything because when we say we're doing everything, we're setting ourselves up for failure and that's not going to help the situation.

34:50Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: I always, I had people like me, I'm a jump in the deep end kind of girl in a pool. No, we're gonna hold onto the steps and walk down. And that's what will be sustainable and will actually retrain your own nervous system. Maybe you're gonna do the love pause. Everybody should do the love pause. You could do it for the annoying colleague at work, for the guy who says stuff to you when you bag your groceries. I'm just saying, right? These things happen. But practice throughout your day and then pick one calming ritual. Is it the four, seven, eight breath? Is it the heart hug? Is it prayer? Is it a mantra?

35:27Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: What is it? Something that is sustainable for yourself and for your child. And we're just going to do it throughout our day, okay? And if your child has a 504 and IEP, why can't you bring this in? I used to do this all the time. It made such a difference. And what's your, you can't pour from that empty cup, people. You really can't. And you'll be saying something, but your body is not going to match that. And you're really almost wasting your time. We have to do things for ourselves. So is it breath? Is it movement? You can do humming and a shake off. And again, this is 60 seconds peppered throughout your day.

36:07Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: And then find a community. You're part of attitude and you're part of community, but you need a community. I think one of the loneliest things I ever experienced as a mom of neurodivergent kids is just not having anybody to talk about it with. Even me as Dr. Roseanne, and I had to build my own community. But we need people who get this, right? But you need daily micro moments of calm. So how do you know when it's not working, right? You're going to see intensity, frequency, and duration. We're looking for when it's not working, right? We're seeing worsening of that intensity. We're seeing it get longer.

36:49Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: We're seeing that the recovery is longer, right? So, but then on the other side, we're reducing the big emotions, right? Because the way it works, people, is it doesn't, there's no magic wand. It just doesn't turn off overnight. We're going to See the changes in the positive, right? And because otherwise, if we think we're going to have immediate calm, you're just going to walk away from this. But more contact, more connection, more willing to discuss things that maybe they weren't willing to discuss, which is such a big deal. Changes in how they respond to things. So we, and then this is just all the things that I have going on.

37:30Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: I have a podcast. I have this great book, which I hope that you are able to get a hold of. And when we really stop fighting all of the behavior and we really start focusing on strengthening our nervous systems, regardless of what's going on with your kid, clinical diagnosis, not clinical diagnosis, five generations of trauma, the nervous system doesn't know that. You know it. And of course it's important. But when we focus on bringing moments of calm into our own body, it actually does transfer to your child. You will see an effect. You'll see those differences in intensity, frequency, and duration.

38:15Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: And we actually create generational change, which I've been able to see in these three decades, which is pretty incredible. So we are here. We're here to answer any questions that you may have had. But I want you to know the biggest takeaway is you have more power than you know. And when you regulate in simple ways, this is really where we start to get changes and you break free from these reactivity cycles that are keeping yourself stuck. That meltdown that you're dealing with, that freak out, that didn't start right there. It started long before that. And when you start to shift yourself, you will actually notice huge differences.

39:01Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: It's not going to ever completely stop those, but it will make it where your child will respond to you and your own nervous system won't be so reactive anymore because you know that this isn't going to be the constant in the norm. So anyway, so we're here and I know that we're here to answer questions. During the presentation, we asked the audience two questions. The first was, which of these do you experience most often with your child? 48 % said explosive meltdowns. 28 % said it depends on the day. 15 % said both equally. and 9 % said shut down slash withdrawal. And the second question we asked was, which trigger affects your child the most?

39:5638 % said homework or other demands. 29 % said transitions. 17 % said sensory overloads and 16 % said social situations. We got so many really good questions. And one of the themes, one of the questions that so many people asked was about safety and what to do when the child gets very aggressive and throws things and potentially hurts themselves or their siblings, or when the parent tries to leave the room and the child follows them, how to deal with this aggressive, or maybe there's the child damages property, how to deal with this aggressive behavior in the moment. Yeah. And let's just be honest.

40:57It's frightening when your child is that dysregulated for a lot of reasons. You're worried about your own safety, the safety of a pet or other people in the home, but also in modern times, you're really worried about outside agencies getting involved. And as somebody who supported aggressive kids, always supported aggressive kids right from the get-go, but also did a lot of work with pans and pandas where this behavior is very common. So number one, everybody's safety is the most important thing. So what can you do to clear the room? What can you do to clear other people? So that has to be the first thing that has to happen, right?

41:40And we have two situations here. We have the person who this is just a constant, and I have a lot more to say about that, but let's just talk about when this is a one-off, right? So when this isn't a normal behavior, I have to be deeply concerned why this is happening. If you're a child, this is an abnormal thing. Kids don't just explode. Kids don't change overnight. I would actually be concerned that something happened to them. So let's put that in the parking lot for a minute. But we want to make sure we are doing everything we can to regulate ourselves. Take that three seconds, come in, respond, put your own oxygen mask on.

42:22That's really what that's about. And then you do not have to, if this is happening at home, that's different than what's happening in public. I understand that. But when this happening at home, you can actually remove yourself. What's the thing that you know is going to bring this situation down to a more manageable level, right? So typically, it's either removing yourself or it's actually potentially hugging your kid. Now, I wouldn't actually tell you to hug your kid unless you know historically that's something that helps. For many of my dysregulated kids, that would help either being in close proximity or you start to see the signals of igniting.

43:11Because most of the time, Carol, when we have somebody who responds out of aggressiveness, there is a history here. This is sort of their nervous system's response, and it's happening a lot. So when you're that parent, you often know there's a trigger coming up. So ideally, if we want to even say, what can we do beyond that, is when you start to see the triggers, right? okay, I'm taking away their device. And that's really honestly the number one reason why kids actually have these explosive behaviors. What are you doing to set up the boundaries around that? But in the immediate, when a kid gets aggressive, clear, don't engage with any words, be as nonverbal as possible, put a hand up that says stop, get your body down on the floor and try to be as calm as possible.

44:09Now, if you have a child where this is happening in public a lot, first of all, you need to find a good provider and figure out why this is happening. We know that individuals on the autistic spectrum are more likely to experience this due to overload. Do you have the button that's educated, right? If you're local in town, have you actually spoken to the police force and put in things in place to educate them about autism and things like that? These are things that my parents I've worked with have done because the fear of other outside agencies is very real and it can be quite scary. So the most important thing is the safety of everybody.

44:56Don't use words. Try to regulate yourself. Try to regulate your child. And if you are in a repeated pattern of this, you have to do some intensive work on regulating yourself. And you really need to find a good provider that can support you in regulating yourself and regulating your child. But know that I've seen the most aggressive kids of all ages turn it around by working on the

45:24Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: nervous system with not much else until they're ready to learn a different way to respond. It's a threat response. It's just a fear response. They're operating in a very primitive way, and we have to change that. What do you mean about talking with the local police authorities? Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So, you know, I've had a lot of kids who are autistic, Pans, pandas have a kind of a history of aggressive behavior based on overload. And so there are national groups that come in and will educate police forces, different groups that are the authorities, and they get autism training.

46:11Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: And that actually is the best training you could possibly imagine. I don't think most people realize that 50 % of all police calls in America are actually mental health related. And the authorities want to do a great job. They really, really do. But depending on their level of education, they're not going to always respond appropriately. I've seen some really amazing things, right? Our local police department actually has a whole autism training. So they don't get into the same kind of conflicts because the reality is our kids can look totally quote unquote typical on the outside. But in the inside, they might just be thinking that everything, their body is reacting like a bear is attacking them.

46:57Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: And when that's happening, there's not much you can do except provide safety and be calm. And then let's try to break this cycle. Okay. So I hope that's helpful for people. Yeah. Yeah. Aptitude Magazine actually did a piece on educating police, local police departments on autism and having some parents talk to police officials about if their kid ends up wandering outside of the house just so they know who they are and where they live and found that to be helpful. We had a lot of questions about teachers believing that the children who become dysregulated are very disrespectful. And the parents say they're not really disrespectful.

47:47They just lose emotional control. And the second part to that is the teacher ends up perhaps not liking the child or the child feels that the teacher doesn't like the child. So how do you talk to teachers in these kinds of situations? And what are some things a parent might say? And also, how do you talk to your child about appearing to be more respectful? Oh, I have so much to say on this, Carol. As a former school psychologist, and also I did neuropsych testing for 22 years, and I would go in and educate people And so I'm going to start off with when we know better, we can do better. And when we think that somebody's in a place of authority or that they have this knowledge, just assume they don't.

48:43And like, I love that you have an Attitude magazine, you know, this thing for, you know, the authorities. Go over there and bring it over and talk to them, especially when you go in and talk to the police when in a non-threat situation, they're amazing, right? That's something different. But when we come to teachers, right, there are all kinds of teachers and they are generally amazing human beings. But when we think about what they know, sometimes I'm in shock and they often contact me more than any other group is educators who are like raising their hands, like, Dr. Rowe, why are we not getting trained on this?

49:24I mean, obviously I'm working on that. I'm trying to do that, but let's get real. Let's talk about what you can do. So assume they know nothing and actually do very simple write-up, you know? My kid in real life, just had a talk with the guidance counselor at my kid's school this morning about this very thing. Not in that he's disrespectful, but like on the outside, he looks much more capable than he is. he's a dyslexic and he's in the first percentile for spelling, which is shocking to people because he's so polite and so capable. So it was like, well, don't just assume because somebody's polite and capable that they're not struggling.

50:04That's just silly. So start with that and say, okay, here's a little bit about Amy. She tends to show signs of, and I just use the word dysregulation because you take personalization out of it. One of my favorite things that I did in all of my career was no matter who I was talking to, I would just form a brain, right? This is a brain. And I would say, this is what's happening in the brain. When we talk about the nervous system in the brain, you don't have to be a scientist here. This is what happens in their system, how they react, how they show themselves. And I found it to 99 % of the time, just be so incredibly helpful.

50:47Here's Amy. Here's what she needs to thrive. Here's what seems to trigger her nervous system. And some of the signs that you'll see, right? So she might get short with you. She might cry and say, you know, we just don't take these things personally. These are the things that help. Having a calm corner in a classroom. Asking her to, you know, go for a walk. asking if you can put your hand on your shoulder, right? Maybe there's, you know, a, you know, I like to do nonverbal stuff with kids, right? Especially kids that are prone to dysregulation. So, you know, do a one, do a two and do a three. And you're going to practice this in moments of time.

51:32So number one, do you want me to sit with you? Number two, do you want to hug? Number three, do you want me to go away? and you can just do this over and over and over with your child of any age and they will start going, they will start showing their fingers and we can teach this to teachers because teachers really generally are really good people but the reality is people personalize behaviors and we have to be regulated enough to be able to say, oh, okay, well, clearly I didn't give her enough time to transition off this game and that's what set off this aggressive behavior. Or I asking him to eat food and they're picky eaters, restrictive eaters.

52:21So the moments that come before it are really huge, but also teachers don't assume they know any of this. I mean, I have a lot of people, you know, printing out things from my website or giving their teachers this book, and just have a gentle conversation with your teacher. It's so much better to just, you know, don't be scared.

52:45Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: I've been there too, where you're like, I'm gonna talk to the teacher and they're gonna tell me a bunch of things I don't wanna hear. It's way better to be proactive and collaborative versus waiting for all of this stuff to blow up or early in the school year, get in there and have a conversation. And it doesn't have to be that big of a deal and just let your teacher know. And also too, I always love to butter up teachers with a little gift of some kind, right? And just could be really thoughtful, a little chocolate, a flower. We're humans. We love that stuff. And let me tell you, it makes a difference.

53:22When I, in three decades, when you came to a special ed meeting with a box of whatever, cupcakes, people were gonna be more open. I love that. A few people wrote about school refusal and how to do with that, that that's a big problem. There's often meltdowns the night before. They can't seem to get them to get ready to go to school at all. What is a good way to deal with that? Yeah. You know, so many, Carol, the kids I worked with experience school refusal. School refusal is the ultimate sign of nervous system distress. us. They don't want to not go to school. Kids want to go to school unless we have a bullying situation, right?

54:10We have a bullying situation. We better really have a very serious meeting. I want you to check your state laws. Every state has laws that most places are not following. We want to make sure we're doing everything we can. But it is, I am so activated. I'm going into this

54:29Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: understimulated mode, right? So what did I do in every one of these cases? It didn't matter what the cause was outside of bullying, okay? So what I did is we had to regulate. I often changed the school schedule. You've got to have a meeting with the school and you have to figure out where is this less likely to happen? And I'm talking about in my more extreme cases where they really are shut down. We're not getting anywhere, right? We're working uphill. The occasional, usually when we work on calming the nervous system and we have good conversation with the school to figure out, hey, what are some things we can do to lighten the demands, usually snap back in and it's positive.

55:15In extreme cases, which it's happening all over,

55:19Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: there are school districts that actually have programs where kids go to with school refusal. So this is happening way more accelerated since the pandemic. So regulate, talk to the school, find out a shortened program. School districts are going to love me for this. You have to, in order to get a shortened program, you need a medical doctor, you need a psychologist, you need somebody licensed to sign off and agree to this. You want to try to get your kids to school. The longer you stay away from school, the more they're going to be resistant to it because their nervous system isn't as stressed.

55:56Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: It's not that they're being defiant. They literally are in survival mode. They don't want to experience that stress. So find a class. I don't care if it's art. I don't care if it's lunch. Your kids go into that one class and then work trying to increase, increase, increase. Once they know they're safe, they'll be able to tolerate more. And that's where all of this nervous system regulation creates the capacity for your kid to return. But this is a team effort with a school. You cannot do this on your own. And if your kid is that resistant, please have a meeting immediately with a school. They do a good job on this because it's happening.

56:41Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: Your kid is not the only one. Yeah. Um, someone writes, my 15 year old son has ODD and he vapes to calm himself down. Obviously this isn't a good decision. He refuses to take meds and I can't make him physically. Can you help me? Yeah. You know, I used to really work with treatment resistant kids. My specialty was that. My specialty was treatment failures. My world record was I was the 55th provider for somebody. Wow. And I never shied away because what happens is once people think they're not going to get better, they don't want to do anything, right? So when we start with regulating ourselves and we try to do some micro things, I never once had a kid who I couldn't get to really collaborate with me.

57:39and just start with yourself and create the capacity for yourself to be able to put a little bit of oxygen in because kids will allow it. When they see you're regulating and you're like, this is not, again, a magic wand. Maybe it's just starting with getting outside in the morning and getting a little sun. Maybe it's petting your dog for 10 minutes. Obviously, vaping isn't a good choice and they don't know what else to do. They've fallen into behaviors that seems to relieve some stress for them. And so we have to replace that very gently, but it won't happen until you're regulating yourself, which actually is the hardest part of this whole thing.

58:25Once you start regulating yourselves, I promise you, your kids will be more open to that. We have to let go this idea that it's overnight, it's often two step forward, one step back, two step forward, one step back. But then when you look, especially for our most dysregulated kids, we say, wow, look at where we went. That intensity, that frequency, and that duration has changed. Okay. This has to be the last question because we're almost out of time. My four-year-old with ADHD has prolonged meltdowns, 30 minutes plus. They include screaming, crying, hitting, kicking, throwing objects. I could use some tips to deal with my four-year-old and these lengthy prolonged meltdowns.

59:15Yeah. So you really are going to grab onto the comms, right? And you're going to work on regulating yourself first. Then we're going to say, this isn't about me. That's that avoiding. And then we're going to be a detective and we're going to start looking at what those triggers are. Because if this is prolonged, this is happening with that intensity, frequency, and duration, your kid is a highly dysregulated kid. You can walk past that. You can move backwards in that. Kids who are four years old are supposed to dysregulate a lot and we don't talk about it. However, if they're getting stuck in the same pattern, kids will dysregulate.

59:57they'll learn a new way they'll dysregulate about something else right so if your kid is in a stuck pattern starting with co-regulation and then really trying to figure out how can i remove some of this stress and you want to practice calm in moments of calm you cannot help a kid be calm in a dysregulated state the nervous system has not experienced calm it's not going to know where it needs to go. It just makes it so much easier. And know that, again, your kid's four years old. We are not born regulated. We learn it. So they absolutely can achieve it. Don't let anybody tell you anything different.

1:00:40Is there, I mean, 30 minutes seems like a long time. Is that, is that a long time or what? That is a long time. Yeah. I had kids that would dysregulate for two hours, three hours, four hours, and the entire day. And some of these kids had clinical diagnoses. Some of these kids didn't. So it's just their body responded in that same way. I always try to explain to people, if you drive home from work, are you using your GPS? No. You're working on an autonomic level. You're automatically getting there. So if your kid finds a way to respond. I think we know this when we have multiple kids. One kid you might have is just more flexible or easy.

1:01:25That's regulation. When we have a kid that's more rigid and getting stuck in behaviors, that's because their nervous system has adopted that as that way. You can unlearn that and you can relearn calm. Regardless of what caused it, we can achieve calm. It's just to be harder and it's just going to be a little longer and needs more elbow grease when you are a neurodivergent. Wow. Dr. Kapanahaj, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with our ADHD community. We really appreciate you. Such great information. Thank you. And for every parent listening, you got this. Thank you to everyone here today.

1:02:08If you would like to access today's event resources, visit attitudemag.com and search for podcast 624. The slides and recording are posted a few hours after each live webinar. If you're listening in replay mode, simply click on the episode description. Please know that our full library of Attitude webinars is available as a podcast. It's called the ADHD Experts Podcast, and it's available on most streaming platforms. Get alerts for future Attitude webinars by signing up at attitudemag.com slash newsletters.

1:02:43Roseann Capanna-Hodge, Ed.D.: For more Attitude podcasts and information on living well with attention deficit, visit attitudemag.com. That's A-D-D-I-T-U-D-E-M-A-G.com.

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